I haven't posted on this in a while, but I'm going to at least post some preliminary numbers; my solar panel is built (mostly) and placed in the back yard (in a temporary location) and is generating between 80-100 watts of electricity per day, after it passes through the Grid Tie controller. I've calculated that it should generate 180 watts, and indeed, when I measure on the DC side of the Grid Tie Inverter, I am seeing 180 watts, so it appears around 30% of the power is being lost in the conversion to AC. This is a bit annoying to say the least, and drives the price up per watt by quite a bit.
Current expenditures
99.00 - Grid Tie Inverter
21.00 - Wooden frame
245.00 - solar cells
===============
365.00 - Total
peak power production: 120 watts
$3.04
average watts produced per day: 600
time to break even: 16 years
so, at this point, building a solar panel on my own is actually not worth doing, mostly because of the amount of electricity I'm losing in the Grid Tie Inverter. If 30% weren't being lost in conversion, we would be doing ok, but with that happening, the cost per watt is drastically affected. I'm going to check out what is going on there; the equation actually gets better if I add more solar panels, since there is a fixed cost for the Grid Tie Inverter, and I'm wondering if the efficiency will improve a bit with more panels connected.
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